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IN PRESS UNIFORM 
WITH THIS VOLUME 



The Maxims of 

William McKinley 

The Maxims of 

Grover Cleveland 

The Maxims of 

Abraham I^incoln 

The Maxims of 

Thomas Jefferson 

The Maxims of 

George Washington 



MAXIMS 



OF 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



"MAXIM — A condensed proposition of 
important practical trnth.^^—IVebster's Un- 
abridged Dictionary. 



CHICAGO: 

THE MADISON BOOK CO. 
1903 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS. 


Two CopiM 


Receive* 


AUG 15 


1903 


V Cspyright 


Entry 

f^c3 

XXfeNo 


COPY 


xT 



Copyright 1903 
By W. M. KANDY 



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flDaxims 



H We have a right to demand the best 

effort from those who should be best able 

to make that effort. 
* * 

^ The college man acquires by virtue of 
is education not special privileges, but 
special duties, and this is as it should be. 
Every man who has been able to get bet- 
ter mental training than his fellows should 
feci an always increasing burden of re- 
sponsibility for his actions, and should 
be ever ready to do more than even his 

full duty by his state. 

* * 

H The squaring of one's deeds with one's 

words is the quality above all others 

which we should exact from public men. 

9 



6 /IDaxtms 

U It is as un-American to deride and at- 
tack the man of means because he is well- 
to-do or the man of letters because he 
has a trained mind as it would be to at- 
tack his poorer brother who has had no 
chance to win the wealth or learning. 

* * 

H No other nation can harm us if only 

we are true to ourselves. 

* ♦ 

H The foundation of our society rests 
upon the man with the dinner pail. What- 
ever is really for his welfare, for his per- 
manent and ultimate welfare, is for the 

welfare of the community. 

* * 

H The lives of truest heroism are those in 
which there are no great deeds to look 
back upon. It is the little things well 
done that go to make up a successful 
and truly good life. 



ITbeo^ore IRoosevelt 7 

HThe two greatest of all Americans, 
the two Americans who left the indelible 
impress of their individuality upon the 
history of the world for all time to come, 
were Washington, who founded the re- 
public, and Lincoln, who saved and per- 
petuated it. 

* ♦ 

^ When great nations fear to expand, 
shrink from expansion, it is because their 
greatness is coming to an end. Are we, 
still in the prime of our lusty youth, still 
at the beginning of our glorious man- 
hood, to sit down among the outworn 
people, to take our place with the weak 

and craven? A thousand times no! 
* * 

U You cannot by law make a man pros- 
perous. You can only give him the 
chance to become prosperous by his own 
exertions. 



8 /IDaxims 

Tf In this life we get nothing save by ef- 
fort. Freedom from effort in the pres- 
ent merely means that there has been 
stored up effort in the past. A man can 
be freed from the necessity of work only 
by the fact that he or his fathers before 
him have worked to good purpose. If the 
freedom thus purchased is used aright, 
and the man still does actual work, though 
of a different kind, whether as a writer 
or a general, whether in the field of poli- 
tics or in the field of exploration and ad- 
venture, he shows he deserves his good 
fortune. But if he treats this period of 
freedom from the need of actual labor as 
a period, not of preparation, but of mere 
enjoyment, even though perhaps not of 
vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is 
simply a cumberer of the earth's surface, 
and he surely unfits himself to hold his 



JLbcot^ovc 1Roo0ex>elt 9 

own with his fellows if the need to do so 

should again arise. *A mere life of ease 

is not in the end a very satisfactory life, 

and above all, it is a life which ultimately 

unfits those who follow it for serious 

work in the world. 

* * 

H Washington did his work not only be- 
cause it was given him, but because he 
possessed to a marked degree the quali- 
ties that every one of us has in him if he 
chooses to develop them; because his 
name was a synonym for honesty, cour- 
age, common sense — the three qualities 
for the lack of which no brilliancy, no 
genius can atone, whether in a man or in 

a nation. 

* * 

H What every man needs is robust virtue, 
that will enable him to go out into the 
world and remain true to himself. 



10 jflDaxims 

IF To flatter or to cringe to the powerful 
are now vices in contradistinction to one 
another; they are the same kind of vice 
in different manifestations; the dema- 
gogfue and the courtier. The demagogue 
who for his own selfish purposes flatters 
cne set of people and the courtier who 
for his own selfish purposes flatters a 
single individual are after all two people 
who stand on the same level of baseness, 
each according to his light striving to 
flatter power as he fancies he sees it with- 
out regard to whether he will do good 

even to those he flatters. 

* * 

H A bad man of ability is worse than a 

bad man of no ability. 
* * 

U The indispensable prerequisite of suc- 
cess under our institutions is genuine- 
ness in the spirit of brotherhood. 



Ubeo^ore IRoosevelt U 

II Our system of §x>vermnent is the best 

in the world for a people able to carry it 

on. Only the highest type of people can 

carry it on. 

* * 

H One of the most abhorrent traits of 
character a man can possess, in my esti- 
mation, is hypocrisy. We all have met 
men who go about clothing themselves 
in scriptural teachings, yet whose conduct 
toward their fellowmen shows that they 
do not live up to the teaching ''love thy 

neighbor as thyself." 
* * 

TI I have known men who were good 
Christians theoretically, yet they were not 
even good companions for their wives. I 
have also known women who went to 
church regularly, but spent their time at 
home nagging their husbands and chil- 
dren. This is not true Christianity. 



12 /Iftaxims 

H It is well enough to tell a man what 
he ought to do, but this must be supple- 
mented by some practical demonstration 
of application. 

U No one ought to submit to being im- 
posed upon, but before you act always 
stop to consider the rights of others be- 
fore standing up for your own. 
* * 

H The only true way to. help a man is to 
aid him in helping himself. All of us 
stumble many times during a lifetime, 
and the duty of a man to his neighbor 
is to help him to his feet so he may help 

himself. 

* * 

II The fellow who works for fee only and 
does the least he can to get his money 
will in the long run prove a dismal fail- 
ure. 



t^beo^ore 1Roo0e\>elt 13 

fl I have no patience with men who al- 
ways are talking about their goodness 
and virtue, yet who never show any 
exterior signs of possessing either. I 
always want to see a plant bear fruit. 

If Life is often hard enough at best ; it is 
sometimes quite as hard for the rich as 
for the poor, and too often the good man, 
the honest and patriotic citizen, suffers 
many blows from fate, and sees some ras- 
cals and some idlers prosper undeserved- 
ly ; but the suresf way to increase his mis- 
ery tenfold is for him to play intO' the 
hands of the scoundrelly demagogues, to 
abandon that stern morality without 
which no man and no nation can ever 
permanently succeed, and to seek a tem- 
porary relief for his own real or imag- 
inary sufferings by plunging others into 
misery. 



14: /iDaxtms 

H We have all seen the type of man who 
is spoken of as his own worst enemy. I 
have no patience with them. Often they 
are a worse enemy to others. A manly 
man — and that is what we all ought to 
be — must have strength and power and 
perseverance. The trials of life test the 
stuff a man or woman is made of, and 
the one who is strong, fearless and cour- 
ageous to do right is the ideal. 

If So far from being in any way a provo- 
cation to war, an adequate and highly 
trained navy is the best guaranty against 
war, the cheapest and most effective 

peace insurance. 
* * 

H If you rob a man of his self-respect, 
take away his sturdy, self-reliant man- 
hood, no good you can do will make 
amends. 



Ubeobore 'KooBevelt 15 

H In our army we cannot afford to have 
rewards or duties distributed save on the 
simple ground that those who by their 
own merits are entitled to the rewards 
get them, and that those who- are pecu- 
liarly fit to do the duties are chosen to 

perform them. 

* * 

^ For many of us life is nothing but 
very hard. Each one of us who does 
anything is going to have hard stretches 
in it; otherwise men would not do any- 
thing. If a man does not meet with 
difficulties, if he does not put himself in 
a way where he has to overcome them, 
he would not do anything that is worthy 
of being done. 
* * 

H The people of the Americas can pros- 
per best if left to work out their own 
salvation in their own way. 



16 /iDaxtms 

II Timid endurance of wrongdoing may 
often be to commit one of the great- 
est evils that one possibly can commit 
against one's fellows. 

H Help given in a spirit of arrogance 
does not benefit any one. Help must 
be given rationally with a feeling of 
good will. 
>K * 

H In the long run the sole justification of 
any type of government lies in its prov- 
ing itself both honest and efhcient. 

H Every man should strive to do justice 
to himself, but in doing so he should not 
forget the rights of his neighbor. He 
should be sure that he is in the right and 
then stand squarely in the path. If there 
is any moving to be done, let the other 
fellow do it. 



UbeoDote IRooeevelt 17 

II The man who' does his ordinary work 
well shows the stuff of which he is made. 
I don't like to see a slack man in any 
vocation. If he does the small things 
that come his way in a loose, bad man- 
ner you can't depend upon him in a 
great crisis or in any sort of a spiritual 
contest. It is the duty of all of us while 
doing the work of the world to show 
that we have not lost sight of spiritual 
ends even in our material conquests. 

H The men who demand the impossible 
or the undesirable serve as the allies of 
the forces with which they are nominally 
at war, for they hamper those who would 
endeavor to find out in rational fashion 
what the wrongs really are and to what 
extent and in what manner it is practi- 
cable to apply remedies. 



18 rt^axim8 

TI When all is said and done, the rule of 
brotherhood remains as the indispens- 
able prerequisite to success in the kind 
of national life for which we strive. Each 
man must work for himself, and unless 
he so works no outside help can avail 
him ; but each man must remember also 
that he is indeed his brother's keeper, 
and that, while no man who refuses to 
walk can be carried with advantage to 
himself or any one else, yet that each at 
times stumbles or halts, that each at 
times needs to have the helping hand 
outstretched to him. To be permanently 
effective aid must always take the form 
of helping a man to help himself; and 
we can all best help ourselves by joining 
together in the work that is of common 
interest to all. 

H It is not enough to mean well. 



Ti;beo&orc iRooscvclt 19 

IT American wage-workers work with 
their heads as well as their hands. More- 
over, they take a keen pride in what they 
are doing, so that, independent of the 
reward, they wish to turn out a perfect 
job. This is the great secret of our suc- 
cess in competition with the labor of 

foreign countries. 
♦ * '- 

tf The chief factor in the success of each 
man — wage-worker, farmer and capital- 
ist alike — must ever be the sum total of 
his own individual qualities and abilities. 
Second only to this comes the power 
of acting in combination or association 
with others. 

1[ If a man is fearless, is honest, has con- 
sideration for others, and if gifted with 
the crowning grace of common sense, he 
IS going to do fairly well. 



20 /II^axtms 

H Our people are now successfully gov- 
erning ourselves because for more than 
a hundred years the}^ have been slowly 
fitting themselves, sometimes conscious- 
ly, sometimes unconsciously, toward this 
end. 

11 What has taken us thirty generations 
to achieve we cannot expect to see 
another race accomplish out of hand, 
especially when large portions of that 
race start very far behind the point 
which our ancestors had reached even 
thirty generations ago. 
* * 

11 There is nothing pecuHar in govern- 
ment. Good government consists in 
applying the old humdrum, everyday, 
commonplace virtues which all of us 
learn, but which all of us do not practice. 



Xi:beot)ote iRoosevelt 21 

If We all of us tend to rise or fall togeth- 
er. If any set of us goes down the whole 
nation sags a little. If any of us raise 
ourselves a little, then by just so much 
the nation as a whole is raised. 

He Hi 

Tf In doing your work in the great world, 
it is a safe plan to follow a rule I once 
heard preached on the football field: 
Don't flinch; don't fall; hit the line hard. 

U When people have become very pros- 
perous they tend to^ become sluggishly 
indifferent to the continuation of the 
policies that brought about their pros- 
perity. At such times as these it is of 
course a mere law of nature that" some 
men prosper more than others, and too 
often those who prosper less, in their 
jealousy of their more fortunate brethren, 
forget that all have prospered somewhat. 



22 /IDaxims 

II We of America, we, the sons of a 
nation yet in the pride of its lusty youth, 
spurn the teachings of distrust, spurn the 
creed of failure and despair. We know 
that the future is ours if we have in us 
the manhood to grasp it, and we enter 
the new century girding our loins for the 
contest before us, rejoicing in the strug- 
gle, and resolute so to bear ourselves 
that the nation's great future shall even 
surpass her glorious past. 

IF If you will study our past history as a 
nation you will see we have made many 
blunders and have been guilty of many 
shortcomings, and yet have always in the 
end come out victorious because we have 
refused to be daunted by blunders and 
defeats — have recognized them, but have 
persevered in spite of them. 



XTbeo^ore IRoosevelt 23 

II There are two kinds of greatness that 
can be achieved. There is the greatness 
that comes to the man who can do what 
no one else can do. That is a mighty 
rare kind, and of course it can only be 
achieved by the man of special and un- 
usual qualities. Then there is the other 
kind that comes to the man who does 
the things that every one could do but 
that every one does not do. To do that, 
you first of all have got to school your- 
self to do the ordinary commonplace 

things. 

* * 

H A man to be a good citizen must first 

be a good bread winner, a good husband, 

a good father. 

* * 

H The country districts are those in which 

we are surest to find the old American 

spirit. 



24 /iDaxtms 

TI With the growth in wealth and pros- 
perity has come an accentuation of dif- 
ferences between man and man which do 
harm in two ways; which do harm when 
they make one man arrogant; which do 
equal harm when they make another 
man envious. 



]f Any really great nation must be pecu- 
liarly sensitive to two things, — stain on 
the national honor at home and disgrace 
to the national arms abroad. Our honor 
at home, our honor in domestic and in- 
ternational affairs, is at all times in our 
own keeping and depends simply upon 
the national possession of an awakened 
public conscience. But the only way to 
make our honor, as affected, not by our 
own deeds, but by the deeds of others, 
is by readiness in advance. 



tlbeobore *KooBe\>elt 25 

H On .the whole, our people earn more 
and live better than ever before, and the 
progress of which we are so proud could 
not have taken place had it not been for 
the great upbuilding of industrial cen- 
ters, such as our commercial and manu- 
facturing cities. But together with the 
good there has come a measure of evil. 
Life is not so simple as it was, and surely 
both for the individual and the com- 
munity the simple life is normally the 
healthy life. There is not in the cities 
the same sense of common underlying 
brotherhood which there is still in coun- 
try localities, and the lines of social 
cleavage are far more clearly marked. 

H We can accomplish by mutual self-help 
much, and there yet remains an immense 
amount to be done by individual self- 
help. 



26 /B3axim6 

II When the weather is good for crops it 
is also good for weeds. Moreover, not 
only do the wicked flourish when the 
times are such that most men flourish, 
but, what is worse, the spirit of envy and 
jealousy and hatred springs up in the 
breasts of those who, though they may 
be doing fairly well themselves, yet see 
others, who are no more deserving, do- 
ing far better. 

H Good laws can do something, but we 
must never deceive ourselves into the 
belief that the law will do more than let 
the man, after a law has been put upon 
the statute books, w^ork out his own sal- 
vation. 

* * 

TI In the long run the only kind of 
help that really avails is the help which 
teaches a man to help himself. 



trbeo^ore IRoosevelt 27 

TI I believe that this nation will rise level 
to any great emergency that may meet 
it, but it will only be because now, in our 
ordinary work day life, in the times of 
peace, in the times when no great crisis 
is upon us, we school ourselves by con- 
stant practice in the commonplace, every 
day indispensable duties, so that when 
the time arrives we shall shoiw that we 
have learned aright the primary lessons 

of good citizenship. 
* * 

]i I think there is only one class of people 

who deserve as well as the soldiers, and 

those are they who teach the children of 

the present how to be the masters of our 

country in the future. 

* * 

H The forces which made these farm-bred 

boys leaders of men are still at work in 

our country districts. 



28 /IDaxims 

H If, when people wax fat, they kick, as 
they have been prone to do since the 
days of Jeshurun, they will speedily de- 
stroy their own prosperity. If they go 
into wild speculation and lose their 
heads, they have lost that which no leg- 
islation can supply, and the business 
world will suffer in consequence. If, in 
a spirit of sullen envy, they insist upon 
pulling down those who have profited 
most by the years of fatness, they will 
bury themselves in the crash of the com- 
mon disaster. It is difficult to make our 
material condition better by the best 
laws, but it is easy enough by bad laws 
to throw the whole nation into an abyss 
of misery. 
* * 

^ You can help a man successfully, but 
you can't carry him successfully. 



xrbeot)ore IRoosevelt 29 

H Doubtless on the average the most use- 
ful man to his fellow citizens is apt to be 
he to whom has been given what the 
psalmist prayed for — neither poverty nor 
riches — but the great captain of industry, 
the man of wealth, who alone or in com- 
bination with his fellows drives through- 
out great business enterprises, is a factor 
without which this country could not 
possibly maintain its present industrial 
position in the world. 

H The good man who is ineffective is not 
able to make his goodness of much ac- 
count to the people as a whole. No mat- 
ter how much a man hears the word, 
small is the credit attached to him if he 
fails tO' be a doer also. In serving the 
Lord he must remember that he needs 
to avoid sloth in his business as well as 
to cultivate fervency of spirit. 



30 /IDaxims 

^ Every man of power by the fact of that 
power is capable of doing damage to his 
neighbors, but we cannot afford to dis- 
courage the development of such men 
merely because it is possible they may 
use their power to wTong ends. If we 
did so we should leave our history a 
blank, for we should have no great 
statesmen, soldiers, or merchants, no 
great men of arts, of letters, or of 
science. 

11 A great fortune if not used aright 
makes its possessor in a peculiar sense a 
menace to the community as a whole, 
just as a great intellect does if it is un- 
accompanied by developed conscience, 
by character. But obviously this no 
more affords grounds for condemning 
wealth than it does for condemning in- 
tellect. 



ti:bcot)ore IRoosevelt 31 

U Our republic has as one of its corner 
stones the education of the citizen. Edu- 
cation is not all. The educated scamp 
is a scamp still and all the more dan- 
gerous to the community, but admitting 
that, it is always true that, while educa- 
tion is not all, without it we would not 
amount to much. We must have a high 
degree of education in the average citi- 
zen or we are not going to be able to 
solve aright the great problems present- 
ed to us. 

^"My plea to you, fellow Americans, is 
to remember that in this country no law, 
no leadership can possibly take the place 
of the exercise by the average citizen of 
the fundamental virtues of good citizen- 
ship, the exercise of the fundamental 
qualities of honesty, courage, and com- 
mon sense. 



32 /IDaxtms 

H Let no father and mother lay to their 
souls the flattering notion that they can 
shirk their duties and think that those 
duties were performed by the school 
teacher, no matter- how good that teach- 
er is. All of you know an occasional 
father and mother who does just that 
thing. We have to have the education; 
we must have the home bringing up; w^e 
must have the trained mind; and then 
we must have, in addition, training for 
what is more than mind — training for 
character. 

U In the long run, it is more comfortable 
to make promises that can be kept, in- 
stead of making promises which are sure 
of an immense reception when made, 
but which entail intolera1)le humiliation 
when it is attempted to carry them out. 



XTbeo^ore IRoosevelt 33 

II It always happens that a good year for 
crops is a good year for weeds. When 
we have prosperity some people for 
whom we do not much care prosper 
more than others, but it is a great deal 
better that some people should prosper 
too much than that none of us should 
prosper at all. The gospel of intelhgent 
hard work is the gospel that pays, and 
of all the gospel the one that pays the 
least is that of envy and rancor, whether 
it is a gospel preached to inflame class 
against class or section against section. 

H If you give a man the best weapon in 
the world and he himself is a pretty poor 
sort of a creature, he will be beaten by a 
good man with a club. 

H It is almost as irritating to be patron- 
ized as to be wronged. 



34 /IDaxims 

11 It does not make any difference how 
brave a man is, or how honest, if he is 
born fooHsh scant will be the good you 
get out of him. 

U The crimes of craft and the crimes of 
violence both are equally dangerous. 
And we must remember after all that 
those who come from the set where one 
kind of crime is dangerous are apt to 
denounce the other type of crime. Both 
must be put down. The man who com- 
mits violence — above all, the body of 
men who commit violence, commit an 
outrage not merely against their fellow 
Americans but against the whole body 
politic to which they belong. 

HThe man who lives simply, and justly, 
and honorably, whether rich or poor, is 
a good citizen, 



Ubeo^ore IRoosevelt 35 

TI The man who tells you that he had a 
patent device by which, in sixty days, he 
would solve the whole question of floods 
along the great rivers would not only be 
a wise man but he would be a perfect 
miracle of wisdom compared to the man 
who tells you that by another patent 
remedy he can bring the millennium in 
our industrial and social affairs. 

H The things that divide one American 
from his fellow Americans are small com- 
pared to the things that unite them. A 
difference of section, a difference of party 
is of no concern if we can develop decent 
citizenship in this country, and to do that 
we need as the foundation, but only as 
the foundation, industrial prosperity. 
That which brings it to one part of the 
country will bring it to all. 



36 /IDaxims 

H Every people that has self-government 
must bev/are of the fossilization of mind 
which refuses to allow of any change as 
conditions change. 

H To bear the nanie of American is to 
bear the most honorable of titles, and 
whoever does not so believe has no busi- 
ness to bear the name at all; and if he 
comes from Europe, the sooner he gets 
back the better. 

H It is fooUsh to pride ourselves on our 
marvelous progress and prosperity upon 
our commanding position in the inter- 
national world, and at the same time 
have nothing but denunciation for the 
men to whose commanding business 
ability v/e in part owe this very progress 
and prosperity, this commianding posi- 
tion. 



'Q:beot)ore 1Roosex>elt 37 

If I despise the man who will not work. 
He is not worth envying, no matter at 
Vv^hich end of the social scale he is. The 
man whO' cannot pull his own weight, 
that man is not any good in our public 
life. Now we have got to do it in widely 
different ways; each man has got to at 
least pull his own weight, and if he is 
worth his salt he will pull a little more. 

T[ It is not a kindness to bring up a child 
in the belief that it can get through life 
by shirking the difficulties. The child 
who is going to be worth its salt must be 
taught to face difficulties and overcome 
them. 

H We need for our citizenship character; 
character into which shall enter honesty, 
courage, and the saving grace of com- 
raon sense. 



38 /IDaxims 

H It is a good thing that there should be 
a large body of our fellow citizens — ^that 
there should be a profession whose mem- 
bers must, year in and year out, display 
those old, old qualities of courage, dar- 
ing, resolution, unflinching willingness to 
meet danger at need. I hope to see all 
our people develop the softer, gentler 
virtues to an ever-increasing degree, but 
I hope never to see them lose the sterner 
virtues that make men men. I feel that 
the profession of railroading is a fine 
anti-scorbutic — that it does away with 
the tendency toward softness. A man is 
not going to be a fireman or an engineer, 
or serve well in any other capacity on a 
railroad long, if, to speak technically, he 
has a ''streak of yellow" in him. You are 
going to find it out, and he is going to 
be painfully conscious of it soon. It is 



XI:beo^otc iRoosevelt 39 

a fine thing for our people that we should 
have those qualities in evidence before 
us in the life work of a big group of our 
citizens. 
* * 

H I pity the creature who does not work, 
at whichever end of the social scale he 
may regard himself as being. The law 
of worthy work well done is the law of 
successful American Hfe. I believe in 
play, too — play, and play hard while you 
play; but don't make the mistake of 
thinking that that is the main thing. The 
work is what counts, and if a man does 
his work well, and it is worth doing, then 
it matters little in which line that work 
is done — the man is a good American 
citizen. If he does his work in slipshod 
fashion, then, no matter what kind of 
"V^ork it is, he is a poor American citizen. 



40 flDaxlms 

H Honesty and courage are not enough. 
You must have common sense. 

^ I firmly believe in my countrymen, and, 
therefore, I believe that the chief thing 
necessary in order that they shall work 
together is that they shall know one an- 
other; that the northerner shall know 
the southerner and the man of one occu- 
pation know the man of another occupa- 
tion; the man who works in one walk of 
life. knows the man who works in another 
walk of Hfe, so that we may realize that 
the things that divide us are superficial, 
are unimportant, and that we, are and 
must ever be knit together into one in- 
dissoluble mass by our American man- 
hood. 

II I believe in preaching, but I believe in 
practice a good deal more. 



tTbeoDore IRoosevelt 4i 

Tf Let us face the fact that there are evils. 
It is foolish to blink at those evils. Let 
us set ourselves, but temperately and 
with sanity, to strive to find out what 
the evils are and to remedy them. If any 
man tells you that he can advance a 
specific by which all the evils of the body 
politic Vv^ill be made to disappear, distrust 
him, for if he is honest he knows not 
what he says. 

T[ The wicked who prosper are never a 

pleasant sight. 
* * 

H Far better it is to dare mighty things, 
to win glorious triumphs, even though 
checkered by failure, than to take rank 
with those poor spirits who neither enjoy 
much nor suffer much, because they live 
in .the gray twilight that knows neither 
victory nor defeat. 



42 /IDaxtms 

H I do not give the snap of my finger 
for a very good man who possesses that 
peculiar kind of goodness that benefits 
only himself, in his own home. I think 
we all understand more and more that 
the virtue that is worth having is the 
virtue that can sustain the rough shock 
of actual living; the virtue that can 
achieve practical results, that finds ex- 
pression in actual Hfe. There may be a 
more objectionable class in the commu- 
nity than the timid good, but I do not 

know it. 

* * 

^ In this life we get nothing save by 
effort. Freedom from elYort in the pres- 
ent merely means that there has been 
stored up effort in the past. A man can 
be freed from the necessity of work only 
by the fact that he or his fathers before 
him have worked to good purpose. 



UbeoOore IRoosevclt 43 

U All of us know people who can be just, 
but who are just in such ways as almost 

to make us wish they were unjust. 

* * 

U Perhaps we must always advance a lit- 
tle by zig-zags; only we must always 
advance; and the zig-zags should go to- 
ward the right goal. 

Tf There is not anything more soul-har- 
rowing for a man in time of war, or for 
a man engaged in a difidcult job in time 
of peace, than to give an order and have 
the one addressed say, ''What?" 

* * 

H The vice of envy is not only a danger- 
ous but also a mean vice, for it is always 
a confession of inferiority. It may pro- 
voke conduct which will be fruitful of 
wrong to others; and it must cause mis- 
ery to the man who feels it. 



44 /iDaxtms 

TI Let us ever most vividly remember the 

falsity of the belief that any one of us is 

to be permanently benefited by the hurt 

of another. 

* * 

H We all look forward to the day when 
there shall be a nearer approximation 
than there has ever yet been to the 
brotherhood of man and the peace of the 
world. More and more we are learning 
that to love one's country above all oth- 
ers is in no way incompatible with re- 
specting and wishing well to all others, 
and that, as between man and man, so 
between nation and nation, there should 
live the great law- of right. 

H The poorest motto upon which an 
American can act is the motto of "some 
men down," and the safest to follow is 
that of "all men up." 



'^:beo^ore tRooscvclt 45 

U The true welfare of the nation is indis- 
solubly bound up with the welfare of the 
farmer and the wage-worker; of the man 
who tills the soil, and of the mechanic, 
the handicraftsman, the laborer. 

H In our eager, restless life of effort, but 
little can be done by, that cloistered vir- 
tue of which Milton spoke with such fine 
contempt. We need the rough, strong 
qualities that make a man fit to play his 
part well among men. Yet we need to 
remember even more that no ability, no 
strength and force, no power of intellect 
or power of wealth shall avail us if we 

have not the root of right living in us. 

* * 

H You want to hitch your wagon to a 
star; but always to remember your limi- 
tations. Strive upward but realize that 
your feet must touch the ground. 



46 /IDaxlms 

H Injudicious and ill-considered benevo- 
lence usually in the long run defeats its 
own ends. To discourage industry and 
thrift ultimately amounts to putting a 
premium on poverty and shiftlessness. 

II If you get together and ask for reform 
as if it was a concrete substance like 
cake, you are not going to get it. If 
you think you have performed your duty 
by coming together once in a public hall 
about three weeks before election and 
advocating something that you know 
perfectly well it is impossible to get, you 

are going to be fooled. 

* * 

II In this government it is not the public 
officials that really govern, it is the 
people themselves. It is the people who 
must make their ideals take tangible 
shape. 



Ubeo^ore IRoosevelt 47 

H One of the things that it always grieves 
me most to hear from the Hps of any 
American is that deification of what we 
call smartness, the deification of cun- 
ning and craft which has been divorced 
from scruple. The man who is successful 
in politics at the cost of abandoning the 
very principles which we hold dear — that 
man does not merely damage that he has 
done by his own career, which may be 
but trifling; he does infinitely more. He 
Iqwers the standards of thousands of 
young men, of tens of thousands who' 
are not able to see clearly, and who are 
blinded by the fact that he has succeeded 
to the further fact that his success was 
not worth having from any true stand- 
point. 

* * 

H It is hard to fail; but it is worse never 
to have tried to succeed. 



48 /IDaxims 

1[ You can't govern yourselves by sitting 
in your studies and thinking how good 
you are. YouVe got to fight all you 
know how, and you'll find a lot of able 
men willing to fight you. Sometimes 
one of these people, who feel that they 
should do something to raise the coun- 
try's political standard, goes to a primary 
and finds a raft of men who have been to 
many primaries. He discovers that he 
counts for nothing. Then, if he is of the 
type of men unfit for self-government he 
says politics are low, and goes home. If 
he is worth his salt he goes again, loses; 
goes again, maybe wins; and finally finds 
that he counts. 

^ No nation has a right to undertake a 
big task unless it is prepared to do it in 
masterful and effective style. 



Ubeo^ote IRooscvelt 49 

H In the sweat of our brows do we eat 
bread, and though the sweat is bitter at 
times, yet in the long run it is far more 
bitter to eat of the bread that is un- 
earned, unwon, undeserved. 

* * 

H The man who by swindling or wrong- 
doing acquires great wealth for himself 
at the expense of his fellow, stands as 
low morally as any predatory mediaeval 
nobleman, and is a more dangerous 
member of society. 

TI No country can long endure if its 
foundations are not laid deep in the 
material prosperity which comes from 
thrift, from business energy and enter- 
prise, from hard, unsparing effort in the 
fields of industrial activity; but neither 
was any nation ever yet truly great if it 
relied upon material prosperity alpn^, 



50 /IDaxims 

H The first time I ever labored alongside 
and g-ot thrown into intimate compan- 
ionship with men who wxre mighty men 
of their land, was in the cattle country 
of the Northwest. I soon grew to have 
an immense liking and respect for my 
associates; and as I knew them, and did 
not know similar workers in other parts 
of the country, it seemed to me then the 
ranch owner was a great deal better than 
any Eastern business man, and that the 
cow puncher stood on a corresponding 
altitude compared to any of his brethren 
in the East. Well, after a little while I 
got thrown into close relations with the 
farmers, and it did not take long before 
I moved them up along side of my be- 
loved cowmen, and made up my mind 
that they really formed the backbone of 
the land. Then, because of circum- 



Ubeo&ore IRoosevelt 51 

stances, I was thrown into intimate con- 
tact with railroad men; and I gradually 
came to the conclusion that these rail- 
road men were about the finest citizens 
there were anywhere around. Then, in 
the course of some official work, I was 
thrown into close contact with a number 
of the carpenters, blacksmiths and men 
in the building trades^ — that is, skilled 
mechanics of high order — and it was not 
long before I had them on the same ped- 
estal with the others. By that time it 
began to dawn on me that the difference 
was not in the men but in my own point 
of view, and that if any man is thrown 
into close contact with any large body 
of our fellow-citizens, it is apt to be the 
man's own fault if he does not grow to 
feel for them a very hearty regard and, 
moreover, grow to understand that on 



52 /IDaxtms 

the great questions that lie at the root of 

human well-being, he and they feel alike. 

* * 

^ When any sport is carried on primarily 
for money — that is, as a business — it 
is in danger of losing much, that is valu- 
able, and of acquiring some exceedingly 

undesirable characteristics. 

* * 

If It is not an easy thing, when you come 
down to the practical reality, to work for 
the best; it is a good deal easier to sit at 
home in one's parlor and decide what 
the best is, than to get out in the field 
and try to win it. When one is in. the 
midst of the strife, with the dust and the 
blood, and the rough handling, and is 
receiving blows, and if he is worth any- 
thing, is returning them, it is difficult 
always to see perfectly straight in the 
direction the right lies. 



Xi:beo&ote iRoosevclt 53 

If Rough vigorous pastimes are excellent 
things for the nation; for they promote 
manliness, being good in their effects 
not merely on the body, but upon the 
character, which is far more important 
than the body. It is an admirable thing 
for any boy or young man whose work 
is of a sedentary character to take part 
in vigorous play, so long as it is not 
carried to excess, or allowed to interfere 
with his work. Every exercise that 
tends to develop bodily vigor, daring, 
endurance, resolution and self-command 
should be encouraged. Boxing is a 
fine sport; but this affords no justifica- 
tion of prize fighting, any more than 
the fact that a cross country run or a 
ride on a wheel is healthy justifies such 
a demoraHzing exhibition as a six day's 
race, 



54 /iDaxtms 

H It is almost equally dangerous either 
tO' blink at evils and refuse to acknowl- 
edge their existence, or to strike at them 
in a spirit of ignorant revenge, thereby 
doing far more harm than is remedied. 
The need can be met only by careful 
study of conditions, and by action which, 
while taken boldly and without hesita- 
tion, is neither harmless or reckless. It 
is well to remember, on the one hand, 
that the adoption of what is reasonable 
in the demands of reformers is the surest 
way to prevent the adoption of what 
is unreasonable; and, on the other hand, 
that many of the worst and most danger- 
ous laws which have been put upon 
statute books have been put there by 
zealous reformers with excellent inten- 
tions. 

* * 



Ubeo&orc IRoosevelt 55 

HJust so long as in the business world 
unscrupulous cunning is allowed the free 
rein which, thanks to the growth of hu- 
manity during the past centuries, we 
now deny to unscrupulous physical force, 
then just so long there will be a field 
for the best effort of every honest social 
and civic reformer who is capable of 
feeling an impulse of generous indigna- 
tion, and who is far sighted enough to 
appreciate when the unscrupulous indi- 
vidual works by himself. 
* * 

TIThe great man is always the man of 
mighty effort, and usually the man whom 
grinding need has trained to mighty 
effort. 

11 Don't let practical politics mean foul 
politics. 



56 /iDaxtms 

TI Rest and peace are good things, are 

great blessings, but only if they come 

honorably; and it is those who fearlessly 

turned away from them when they have 

not been earned, who in the long run 

deserve the best of their country. 
* * 

H Hardy outdoor sports, like hunting, 
are in themselves of no small value to 
the national character and should be en- 
couraged in every way. Men who go 
into the wilderness, indeed men who take 
part in any field sports with horse or 
rifle, receive a benefit which can hardly 
be given by even the most vigorous 

athletic games. 

* * 

1[ It is the law of success to dare, to do 

and to endure. It is only by so acting 

that success can come, that you will be 

successful 



tI:beo^ore IRoosevelt 57 

H From an armor plant to a street rail- 
way, no work which is really beneficial 
to the public can be performed to the 
best advantage of the public save by 
men of such business capacity that they 
will not do the work unless they them- 
selves receive ample reward for doing 

it. 
* * 

H There is no need of envying the idle. 
Ordinarily, we can afford to treat them 
with impatient contempt; for when they 
fail to do their duty, they fail to get from 
life the highest and keenest pleasures 
that life can give. 

^If ever Anarchy is triumphant, its tri- 
umph will last for but one red moment, 
to be succeeded for ages by the gloomy 
night of despotism. 



58 /iDaxims 

11 We hold work not as a curse but as a 
blessing, and we regard the idler with 
scornful pity. It would be in the highest 
degree undesirable that we should all 
work in the same way or at the same 
things, and for the sake of the real great- 
ness of the nation we should in the fullest 
and most cordial way recognize the fact 
that some of the most needed work 
must, from its very nature, be unremun- 
erative in a material sense. Each man 
must choose so far as the conditions 
allow him the path to which he is bidden 
by his own peculiar powers and inclina- 
tions. But if he is a man he must in 
some way or shape do a man's work. 
If, after making all the effort that 
his strength of body and of mind 
permits, he yet honorably fails, why, he 
is still entitled to a certain share of re- 



Ubeobore H^oosepelt 59 

spect because he has made the effort. But 
if he does not make the effort, or if he 
makes it half-heartedly and recoils from 
the labor, the risk, or the irksome 
monotony of his task, why, he has for- 
feited all right to our respect, and has 
shown himself a mere cumberer on the 
earth. 

11 When a man is well off, he is very apt 
to be willing to take chances. When 
he is badly off, then he is more careful. 

HAll that laws can do is this: They 
can be so shaped, framed and admin- 
istered as to give the average man the 
best possible chance to use aright his 
own skill, thrift, courage, resolution and 
business capacity. This is what can be 
done, and this is what has been done. 



60 /IDaxims 

Tl Anarchy is no more an expression of 
"social discontent" than picking pockets 
or wife beating. 
* * 

TIAs a rule the man who is the loudest 
denouncer of corporate wealth — spelling 
"corporate" with a large "C" and 
"wealth" with a large "W" — and who 
is most inflammable in his insistence, in 
public, that he will not permit the 
liberties of the country to be subverted 
by the men of means, is himself the very 
man for whom you want to look out 
most sharply when there comes up some- 
thing which some corrupt corporation 
does really want, and about which there 
is not any great popular excitement at 

the moment. 

* * 

IfThe only homage that counts is the 

homage of deeds. 



tl;beo^ore IRoosevelt ci 

II In the great part which hereafter, 
whether we will or not, we must play 
in the world at large, let us see to it 
that we neither do wrong nor shirk from 
doing right because the right is difficult; 
that on the one hand we inflict no in- 
jury, and that on the other we have a 
due regard for the honor and the interest 
of our mighty nation; and that we keep 
unsullied the renown of the flag which 
beyond all others of the present time or 
of the ages of the past stands for con- 
fident faith in the future welfare and 
greatness of mankind. 
* * 

H We are in honor bound each to strive 
according to his or her strength to bring 
ever nearer the day when justice and 
wisdom shall obtain in public life as in 
private life. 



62 /iDaxtms 

Tf Every wealthy corporation that per- 
petrates or is allowed to perpetrate a 
wrong helps to produce or inflame a 
condition of angry excitement against all 
corporations, which in its turn may in 
the end harm alike the honest and dis- 
honest agents of public service, and 
thereby do far-reaching damage to the 
whole body politic. 
^ * 

tfAny rational attempt to prevent or 
counteract the evils, by legislation or 
otherwise, is deserving of hearty sup- 
port; but it can not be too deeply im- 
pressed upon us that such attempt can 
result in permanent good only in pro- 
portion as they are made in a sane and 
wholesome spirit, as far removed as pos- 
sible from what is. hysterical or revolu- 
tionary. 



XLbcoboxc 1Roo6e\>elt 63 

H Our country calls not for the life of 
ease, but for the life of strenuous en- 
deavor. Let us therefore boldly face the 
life O'f strife, resolute to do our duty well 
and manfully; resolute to uphold right- 
eousness by deed and by word; resolute 
to be both honest and brave, to serve 

high ideals, yet to use practical methods. 

* * 

^ A law must not only be correct in the 
abstract. It must work well in the con- 
crete. 
* * 

tl It is infinitely better when needed so- 
cial and civic changes can be brought 
about as the result of natural and healthy 
growth than when they come with the 
violent dislocation and widespread 
wreck and damage inevitably attendant 
upon any movement which is revolu- 
tionary in its nature. 



64 /lDaxtm6 

H Though conditions of life have grown 
so puzzling in their complexity, though 
the changes have been so vast, yet we 
may remain absolutely sure of one thing; 
that now, as ever in the past, and as it 
ever will be in the future, there can be 
no substitute for the elemental virtues, 
for the elemental qualities to which we 
allude when, we speak of a man as not 
only a good man, but as emphatically 
a man. We can build up the standard 
of individual citizenship and individual 
well being, we can raise the national 
standard and make it what it can and 
shall be made, only by each of us stead- 
fastly keeping in mind that there can be 
no- substitute for the world-old, hum- 
drum, commonplace qualitites of truth, 
justice and courage, thrift, industry, com- 
mon sense and genuine sympathy with 
and fellow feeling for others. 



XTbeobore IRoosevelt 65 

H Because we set our own household in 
order, we are not thereby excused from 
playing" our part in the great affairs of 
the world. A man's first duty is to 
his home, but he is not thereby excused 
from doing his duty to the State; for 
if he fails in this second duty it is under 
the penalty of ceasing to be a free man. 

H This country can not afiford to have 
its sons less than men; but neither can 
it afiford to have them other than good 
men. If courage and strength and in- 
tellect are unaccompanied by the moral 
purpose, the moral sense, they become 
merely forms of expression for unscrupu- 
lous force and unscrupulous cunning. If 
the strong man has not in him the lift 
toward lofty things his strength makes 
him only a curse toi himself and to his 
neighbor. 



ee /iDaxtms 

H Probably the large majority of the 
fortunes that now exist in this country 
have been amassed, not by injuring man- 
kind, but as an incident to the con- 
ferring of great benefits on the 
community, — whatever the conscious 
purpose of those amassing them may 
have been. The occasional wrongs com- 
mitted or injuries endured are o-n the 
whole far outweighed by the mass of 
good which has resulted. The true^ 
questions to be asked are: Has any 
given individual been injured by the ac- 
quisition of wealth by any man? Were 
the rights of that individual, if they have 
been violated, insufficiently protected by 
law? If so, these rights, and all similar 
rights, ought to be guaranteed by ad- 
ditional legislation. The point to be 
aimed at is the protection of the indi- 

LcfC. 



II:beo^ore IRooserelt 67 

vidual against wrong, not the attempt 
to limit and hamper the acquisition and 

output of wealth. 

* * 

Tf For almost every gain there is a pen- 
alty. 

* * 

If To be a good husband or good wife, 
a good neighbor and friend, to be hard- 
working and upright in business and 
social relations, to bring up many 
healthy children — to be and to do all 
this is to lay the foundations of good 

citizenship as they must be laid. 

* * 

TI In the abounding energy and intensity 
of existence in our mighty democratic 
republic there is small space indeed for 
the idler, for the luxury-loving man who 
prizes ease more than hard, triumph- 
crowned effort. 



68 /IDaxims 

H Poor work is always dear, whether 
poorly paid or not, and good work is 
always well worth having. 

HThere is grave danger in attempting to 
establish invariable rules. 

U There is no use whatever in seeking to 
apply a remedy blindly. 

U Lip-loyalty by itself, avails very little, 
whether it is expressed concerning a 
nation or an ideal. 

H We cannot retain the full measure of 

our self-respect if we cannot retain pride 

in our citizenship. 

* * 

HWoe to all of us if ever as a people 

we grow to condone evil because it is 

successful. 



UbeoDore IRoosevelt 69 

IF It is not given to us all to succeed, 
but it is given to us all to strive man- 
fully to deserve success. 
* * 







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